Car-free Friday and the start of Bike Fest in Pittsburgh

It was a wonderful morning to be out on the bike today. It wasn't too hot. It was nice and sunny, but there was a bit of fog hanging around to give some sense of distance as the sunlight filtered through it.


Pittsburgh (and other places) has an ongoing group of folks promoting the concept of car-free Fridays. The biking, public transit, and environmental (for lack of a better all-encompassing term) communities are trying to get the idea out there that there are a lot of reasons to avoid use of a personal motor vehicle when it's unnecessary. If we take one day a week and use some alternative form of transportation, it can help reduce traffic congestion, pollution, energy use, stress, and other bad things. I don't mean to leave out the other forms of transportation by talking about bikes and buses. The in-line skating and kayak/canoe communities are represented in groups promoting friendlier forms of commuting.

Anyway, today's a Friday, but it's also the start of Bike Fest! Bike Fest is an annual cycling celebration in Pittsburgh that sees a wide array of celebratory events around the city for about 10 days. The events are grass-rootsy in that most are organized by various groups, clubs, or companies. However the overall coordination and some of the events are done by the local bike advocacy group, Bike Pittsburgh. This morning, the Neighbors in the Strip business association sponsored a car-free breakfast event outside the office of the advertising company, Mullen. From the Bike Fest description of the event:

There will also be a host of businesses attending as well including Enrico Biscotti Co. (with free biscotti samples), Right by Nature (with Give Water and Streaz drink samples and bike raffle), Schoolhouse Yoga(with free yoga breathing sessions) and Three Rivers Inline Club (info on inline skating as a commuting option), just to name a few.

Pittsburgh Pedicabs was present, letting folks try out the bike.

Four of us in our office rode in today. Our count is between 2 and 8, depending on weather and what's going on at work. There are only three of us who ride regularly year-round. Below is a picture of the new location of our bike rack. The HVAC testing area caused the first move of the rack to the larger research bay. But then, the building envelope/thermal enclosure mock-up took up that space, and the bike rack got moved to the area outside the former BuildIQ cubicle area. I'm happy the company has continued to try to keep the rack indoors.

Two parting shots of cyclists I encountered on my way into town this morning. Both on Penn Ave. Note the correct name, Becky. :)

Casino friction and poop engineering

Here are a few pictures from casual ride around the North Side last week. I'm trying to catch up a little bit. The picture above is of the riverfront along the new casino. They originally wanted cyclists to dismount in front of the casino. However, that was met with outrage by the cycling community. The city responded fairly and appropriately, asking them to remove the signs. There were articles about it in the local media. Bike Pittsburgh has a good summary article, here. I'm happy with the city's response and that the casino agreed to remove the signs. I'm sure there will be times where it is too crowded to ride safely, and that's ok. We can all get along.

Below are two shots of ALCOSAN, the county wastewater treatment plant on the Ohio River. A civil engineer I know who consults with ALCOSAN considers himself a "poop engineer". It cracks me up. I like it when people don't take themselves too seriously.

More on the sharrows in the Strip

The sharrows are indeed on Penn Ave between 31st St and 26th St. The 23rd St to 16th St is a very crucial section that still needs to be painted. Evidently, the plan is to go all the way into downtown.

Of course, they're no silver bullet. We all still need to try to get along. The problem cyclists and motorists are still going to be out there, but this helps validate cycling as a serious mode of transportation and hopefully helps garner a greater feeling of safety for those riders who are unsure about riding in traffic.

Sharrows in the Strip!

According to the Bike Pittsburgh blog, the city painted sharrows in the Strip District today. This will link the bike lane on Liberty Ave to Penn Ave and head into downtown. My office is in the Strip District, but I don't think they'd made it down to 21st St by the time I took my lunchtime stroll at 11:30 today. I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow.

More at: http://bike-pgh.org/2009/08/06/fresh-sharrows-on-penn-ave-in-the-strip/

Ghost bike ceremony

The Pittsburgh bike community memorialized Rui Hui Lin tonight. He was hit and killed by a hit-and-run driver two days ago in Oakland. Today that driver turned himself in, thankfully.

There were 60-70 people at the event, perhaps more. It seemed that most of those in attendance were from the bike and/or college student communities. It was interesting that the Asian/Asian-American community wasn't better represented. I don't know how much was communicated to Rui Hui's family, friends, and workplace about what was happening. Perhaps they are grieving in their own way and this was not helpful to them. Nonetheless I hope they feel the support and inclusion in the greater Pittsburgh community, and that their loss is felt by us all.

My guess is that most people there did not know him. I didn't. It doesn't matter. He was a cyclist. He was a father. He was a friend we didn't know yet. This incident took away the most important thing he could give his 5-year old daughter, his unborn child, and his wife...his presence and his love.

It's been a sad couple of days for me. This could have been me, Bethany, or anyone else that rides a bike, walks on the sidewalk, or whatever. We're soft and prone with no chance against the horsepower, mass, and inertia of a car or truck. We all take our modes of transportation for granted. I'm happy that the 0.5% of our brainpower we use to propel ourselves around in our cars is normally enough to prevent this sort of tragedy. Sadly, none of us pays enough attention and this is the sad consequence. I'm happy to have survived being hit by a car. I happy for my family that I'm still here to be with them and love them. But there is a statistical chance that every time we walk out the door, it'll be for good.

Let's make a deal. I'll pay more attention on the bike and in the car and try to get along better. Can everyone else do the same? We'd all be better because of it.

Biker down

We lost a biker two days ago in a hit and run accident in Oakland. I'm sad for him and his family. He had recently received US citizenship and leaves behind a pregnant wife and 5-year old child.

There is a ghost bike ceremony tonight to memorialize the rider. Urban Velo tells a bit more.

WTAE article about the accident.

*Update: The driver turned himself in today.

Homebrew electric-assist recumbent bike

During our stroll tonight, we ran across this handsome DIY electric-assist recumbent bicycle outside of Armand's (yes, of the famous fish sandwich). We didn't see the owner. Alas.

Brake replacement

The rear brakes on my road bike have been acting up for a while. I suspected the brake pads were worn, but hadn't really taken the time to pull them apart and check them until yesterday. Turns out that they were less worn than I feared. I was worried I'd blasted all the way through the brake material into the metal substrate. Luckily, that hadn't happened yet, but you can see in the first picture below that it was very near at hand on the inboard pad. The big problem was that the retaining/return spring had broken. This forced the outboard pad into misalignment and allowed the grab tab on that pad to rub on the rotor. The wear on the rotor is visible, but it doesn't appear to be seriously grooved. I'll be keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn't warp or rust out.


For comparison, here is the set I pulled from my parts bike to replace the pair shown above. The spring has much more spread to it, not to mention is still whole. The pads have a little wear, but I didn't have many miles on that bike before I got hit on it and destroyed the frame.


For reference, these are for an Avid BB7 road mechanical disc brake. The pads have something like 1,500-2000 miles on them, including this past winter's commuting.

Vista Street, Pittsburgh

I did some hill climbing after work yesterday. I did a casual 10 miles before work and 11 after work on some of the hills on the North Side. The picture was taken from the appropriately named, Vista Street.

My camera is in the shop being repaired (I'm hard on things), so I'm stuck either borrowing Bethany's camera or, as in this case, using my cell phone. The pictures are sort of ok, as long as nothing is moving, there isn't too much contrast, and there is a lot of light...

First mountain bike race

Bethany and Silas supported me during my first mountain bike race. It was the Fat Tire Challenge outside of Sigel, PA. The sport category was 14 1/2 miles of single and double track trails in the wonderful forests of northwestern Pennsylvania. There were some nice technical sections and lots of mud. I survived my first flight over the handlebars after solidly planting my front wheel in hole dropping down from a large boulder. There was a long (reputedly 2 mile) climb in the middle that didn't turn out so bad, but the mile-long climb near the end was pretting grueling.

My goal was to finish within 2 hours, because I had no idea of what to expect. I missed it by 10 minutes (2:10 total). I'm ok with that. I didn't get hurt (which was my highest priority goal) and did lose 3+ of those minutes due to thowing my chain off the small chainring and wedging it good between it and the frame. I was almost to the point of giving up on fixing it and running the bike the rest of the way to the finish.

I think if they'd have normalized the field by either inverse cost of the bike or bike mass, I'd have been in the running for a medal. My bike was probably $400 new and cost me $150 used. The guy I was talking to setting up next to our car was riding a frame that cost $1,800. That's without the components and wheels and whatnot. Granted, he was good enough for that to make a difference. He placed 2nd in the expert class single-speed division.

Silas checked my gear over for me.

Setting up the group start. The expert riders were already 20 minutes into their race.

Transition to a jeep road about 7 miles into the race.

Beautiful part of the world to be riding!

Survived with a smile.

Final gear check by coach.

First adventure race

Between our kid's blog and facebook, it's hard to keep up on this blog as well. Nonetheless, I wanted to document some of the fun I had in my first adventure race. It was the HVAC race put on by Grass Roots Racing, a group out of Pittsburgh that runs a series of entry-level adventure races that don't require the crazy levels of skill and dedication of the multi-day big events. Besides the 'orienteering' and whatnot, the race was about 15 miles on the mountain bike, 100-200 m swim, and about 5 miles of trail running.

It was my teammate, Arn's, first adventure race as well. We had a brilliantly fun time. We didn't intend on winning or coming close to being competetive. It was more about the exploration into this type of racing. I'd like to do the next in the series, but have a schedule conflict. Hopefully, I can do the August one in Pittsburgh with Bethany, and then the last two with Kevin or Arn. Kevin is by far the best runner I know, and I think we'd work as well as a team as Arn and I did. We've talked about doing this for more than a year now, without getting our schedules to work out.

I bought a very low-end, used mountain bike to get me through the race a week before. It's an ok ride for this, but can't put up with the beating for too long.

Behind at this blogging thing

I've taking a pretty good hiatus from the interactive side of the world of the internet for the past month or so. I still don't have time to write now, but ended up writing a piece for my long-neglected HGTVpro blog about the solar conference I went to in Buffalo, NY, last month. That post is:

SOLAR 2009 conference

Since my last post, much has gone on that I am incapable of finding the time to write all about. On the fun side, I acquired a mountain bike and competed in my first adventure race this past weekend. More about that when I can sit down and write about it tonight because it isn't that stale and was a great time.

2009 YTD GPS map

Just for kicks, here is an image of the 2009 GPS data overlaid onto the map of the greater Pittsburgh area in GoogleEarth. Cycling routes are in yellow, running in red, hiking in green, and canoeing in blue. The icons sort of overlap when coincident, so frequently traveled areas come out sort of jumbled.

There are runs, rides, and hikes in West Virginia, New York, Indiana, Nevada, and other parts of Pennsylvania that are not shown. It is pretty addictive to get to track where you've been with the GPS. When I miss logging an event due to a variety of reasons, I always curse myself because it feels like the ride/run/etc wasn't really validated without the GPS data. I know, it sounds like I need to get a life.

2009 mileage through the end of May

Ok, I haven't posted in forever. Much has happened. I'll try to catch up. In the meantime, I was working on this tonight, so I figured I'd share. Here are my mileage totals (measured by GPS) for each month for several activities.

	January	February	March	April	May
Cycling	0	70.0	136.0	231.4	252.6
Running	0	27.0	26.6	49.8	60.1
Canoeing	0	3.4	9.4	3.2	4.7
Hiking	4.4	14.3	8.9	3.1	15.1

Training is going well. Running has been really, really good for me...physically and mentally. I like the time on the bike, but running clears my head so much more, and I have less likelihood of negativity resulting from intolerant drivers on the roads. Plus, in general, when you're running and smile or say 'hi' to someone, they respond positively. That's much less common on the bike. Mostly because on the road, you're in you own little bubble of reality and nobody seems to like to be yanked out from behind the veil of anonymity that being in a car gives you (and by extrapolation, all other vehicle types).

My general overall leg strength is much more balanced now that I have a significant running component to my training. My knees hurt less from the bike and running is no longer feeling like I'm killing myself through joint pain every time I go out. I think all the time on the bike has made some muscles too strong for their own good in relation to the other leg and joint connective muscles that aren't being exercised on the bike. That's just my unscientific hypothesis, though... Don't go reporting it as truth just because you read it on some blog.

My May mileage on the bike would have been more, but my bike is disintegrating under me. As my friend, Dave, mentioned, the Shimano engineers did a killer job on value engineering the drivetrain parts. Two months after the 2-year warranty on all of the Shimano parts ran out, the damn thing fell apart. I replaced the cassette early in the month (and the chain). Now, the bottom bracket bearings are failing rapidly. I'm looking to buy tools to tear it apart, so I can overhaul the bottom bracket with the parts from the bike I got hit on (with about 50 miles on it). Like I've mentioned before, I'm not convinced that a 10-speed rear cassette and associated skinny parts are worth it. My mountain bike with 7-speed system (3 front x 7 rear, 21 total gear ratios) rode through rain, snow, and whatnot for 10 years before I got the fancy idea to make it a single speed bike.

Crush the Commonwealth

This morning, twenty-some riders took off on the annual, no-prize, Crush the Commonwealth race. It's a self-supported race between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Odd years, it starts in Pittsburgh (as it did this year), and even years in Philly. My friend, Kevin, and I got out early to see them off on their 5AM start.

Thomas Edison bike tricks

The father of the light bulb and other inventions was also into film and perhaps an admirer of bicycles. He filmed a friend doing freestyle bike tricks. The landing at the end wasn't particularly elegant... Despite the comments, it looks like Edison did the filming, not the riding. Alas.

Saturday ride

Warm weather really hit us this weekend. I went out for a 20+ mile ride around Highland Park and across the Allegheny River to Aspinwall/Fox Chapel, then back up the steep incline around 57th St. I met up with Bethany and Silas at a park in Bloomfield on the way out to play. I didn't get many pictures worth showing, just the entrance of a church on lower 57th.

Hey, where's your stoker?

I caught up to this person riding a tandem bike solo climbing the Liberty hill the other day. I didn't get to talk to him/her because I met up with my turn just as I caught up. I wonder what the story was. I've ridden our tandem some by myself, but not in the city yet. It's a funny sight to see. Maybe I should do ride it to/from work one day, just to give people something to talk about.

Checking out trailers

While Bethany was teaching yoga the other day, Silas and I checked out some bike trailers. This one wasn't quite to his liking. He didn't like the solid plastic/nylon wheels. He did like playing with the paperwork in the side pocket. The search continues...

Bike commuters take over the research bay

We had six bike commuters today! The seventh bike has been abandoned since the weather got wet and cold in the fall. The offending person says she'll get the bike home and start riding again soon. We're going to need to build another rack to accommodate the few more riders we'll likely pick up when the weather actually gets nice. This one is Kevin's handwork.

The flash sets off the reflective sidewalls on Dave's and my bikes nicely. John's got a good reflective strip around his seatpost tool bag.